Receive Who You Are

Last year, while researching a talk I was to give to our catechumens, I stumbled upon a quote from St. Augustine in the Catechism of the Catholic Church at paragraph #1396. At the time of his writing which would have been in the 4th century, Bishop Augustine composed a mystogogical reflection to help his neophytes understand the meaning behind the Eucharist that they had just received for the first time. What struck me upon reading it was how completely fresh and modern it sounded to my 21st century ears. Though 1600 years have passed, there is still much meaning to be contemplated within Augustine's description of the mystery of Christ's presence in the Eucharist. This is what I read:

"So now, if you want to understand the body of Christ, listen to the Apostle Paul speaking to the faithful: you are the body of Christ, member for member. {I Cor. 12:27} If you, therefore, are Christ's body and members, it is your own mystery that is placed on the Lord's table! It is your own mystery that you are receiving! You are saying, "Amen" to what you are: your response is a personal signature, affirming your faith. When you hear, "the body of Christ," you respond, "Amen." Be a member of Christ's body, then, so that your "Amen" may ring true." SERMON #272

In the recording from our Lenten concert this year, you'll hear a couple of our choir members really shine. The main soloist on this piece, Sarah Bolling-Mancini is joined on alto harmony by Nimalie Stone. On the final refrains and on the Coda, you'll also hear the choir of IHM energetically providing the descant, "Corpus Christi (body of Christ) Sanguine Christi (blood of Christ). We will live in Christ's own Spirit. One body and blood and one soul, one divinity; receive who you are."

While playing the piano on this piece at our concert, I remember feeling overwhelmed by the vibrant faith of our singers and players coming to life and resounding within the semi-darkness of the church. As I listen to this recording, it continues to stir my soul to hear us joining the chorus of our 2000 year tradition of belief in the real presence of Christ in the holy Eucharist.

The instrumental parts for strings and woodwinds were arranged by Mark Scozzafave, who along with his wife Aimee, are alums of IHM's music ministry. Though we missed their participation in our concert this year since they have returned to their careers and their incredible music ministry at their home parish of Old St. Pat's in Chicago, we were so pleased that Mark could share his considerable musical gifts with us in this way.

How grateful Michael and I are to hear our musical ideas come to such beautiful fruition through the collaborative spirit of so many inestimably talented people who have also become dear friends. We'd like to thank you, too, for listening and for taking part in our music ministry in this way! As always, we certainly welcome your feedback.  Lyrics can be found after the jump.

We Are The Work Of His Hands

As promised (and at last!), we're going to be uploading some of our new music.  The song I'm uploading today, We Are The Work Of His Hands, is actually a couple of years old, but we only just introduced it to our parish at the recent Lenten concert.

This song was inspired by a simple insight that God, our Father, shared with me not long after the birth of my son, Peter.  He was just a few months old at the time, and he and I were up late together one night while Mom was getting some well-deserved rest.  I was holding him in my lap, and he was smiling up at me.  And in that moment I felt immensely proud - a sense of pride that I’m sure every parent knows well.  Proud for no other reason than that here in my hands was my beautiful, wonderful son, and what a blessing it was that God had entrusted me with such a great gift.

And then I was overcome with the sense that God, the Father, was there, looking down on us, holding us in hand, and feeling that same sense of fatherly pride for the two of us.  I don’t know that I have ever in my life had cause to doubt God’s love for me, but by the same token, I had never felt that he was particularly proud of me either.  But as soon as He graced me with that insight, I felt like I should have known it all along.  He’s looking down on all of us as a proud Father, and knowing that makes me want to make Him even more proud.  The memory of that evening is something I will always treasure and we've tried to capture some of that in this song.  Drawing inspiration from the creation story, the lyrics urge us to continue God's great work of creation and make Him proud.  Lyrics are after the jump.

(One final note, we had some technical difficulties with the recorder at our concert and unfortunately part of the third verse was lost.  Special thanks to Bob Gillespie for some fantastic editing work to make this presentable - I'm willing to bet most folks wouldn't realize that half of verse 3 is missing.  All the lyrics are included below in case you're curious!)

A Final Triduum Reflection

And here is the final spoken reflection from our 2012 Lenten Concert.  Written and delivered by Cory Labrecque, this reflection is on the eleventh chapter of John's Gospel, the story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead.

Reflection on John 11

Good Friday Reflections

We have some exciting news.  We just received a copy of the recorded 2012 Lenten Concert, Til Love Embraces All, which means we have new songs to post here.  Special thanks to Jeff Brugger and Bob Gillespie for doing all the recording and editing.

We'll start posting some of this new material after Easter, but in the interim, we thought the occasion of the Triduum was a great time to post the spoken reflections that were given at the concert.  The theme of our concert this year was a meditation on the Scrutinies. The concert was organized into three sections, each built as a reflection in word and song around one of the Scrutiny stories from the Gospel of John.  We began each section with a spoken word reflection on the respective Gospel story.  Today, we are posting two of those reflections.

First is a reflection on the fourth chapter of John's Gospel, written by Fr. Stephen Vrazel and delivered by B.J. Abraham.
Reflection on John 4


And second, a reflection on ninth chapter of John written and delivered by Drew Denton.
Reflection on John 9



We'll post the final spoken reflection from the concert tomorrow.

Thank you, thank you!

Our Lenten concert was a wonderful success, a very Spirit-filled evening of prayer and song.  Thank you so much to all of you who were able to attend.  Your presence means more to us than you can know.

One of the decisions that we and Jeff Bush, IHM's director of liturgy (and choir director), made early on in the planning of the concert was that more than just a concert, we wanted the event to be a prayer service for our community of faith, and we're confidently hopeful that we were able to achieve that.  The only downside to this decision was that, unlike a traditional concert setting, there was never an opportunity to publicly acknowledge and thank the many people who volunteered to make last Saturday night possible.  So we'd like to take a moment here to do just that and thank all the wonderful, generous people without whom the concert would not have happened.

First, a special thank you to Jeff Bush, IHM's director of liturgy and our choir director.  From his behind the scenes work like printing tickets and programs to running the rehearsals and then to ultimately directing the choir and ensemble at the concert, Jeff did it all.  We are so blessed to be able to work under his direction, and we very well might not have started collaborating on songwriting without his support and encouragement.

Thank you to the writers and speakers who contributed their time and talents on the spoken Gospel reflections: Fr. Stephen Vrazel, B.J. Abraham, Drew Denton, and Cory Labrecque.  Each reflection was beautiful and moving, and they really helped tie each section to our overall theme of the Scrutiny stories from the Gospel of John.

Thank you to Paul Tate and Mark Scozzafave for writing the arrangements on several of the new songs we debuted.  The music was beautiful, and frankly, concert or not, it's always fun to have an excuse to talk music with those guys.

Thank you to our sound technician, Brian Hutcheson, and to Jeff Brugger for recording the night's proceedings.  And thank you to both of them for helping to pack up afterwards, an unsung task if ever there was one.

And finally, thank you to all the musicians and singers in the IHM music ministry who contributed their time and talents to bringing this music to life.  Several folks who couldn't participate in the performance still attended to help in other ways, like selling tickets and greeting visitors.  What a glorious gift these individuals are to our parish!  Now after weeks of preparation for this concert, these same folks will jump right into preparing for the Triduum.  We are honored and privileged to work with such a talented and selfless group. Thank you all!

Lenten Concert This Weekend!

Apologies to our small but dedicated band of followers and fans for not updating this website in a while.  In case you haven't heard though, the IHM music ministry is putting on another Lenten concert this Saturday night (3/10/12) at 7:30pm at Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church in Atlanta.  We'll be featuring several new songs that we've written over the past year.  Admission is $12 per person ($8 for seniors and students).  All proceeds will benefit the music ministry of IHM parish.  Please join us for a prayer-filled evening of reflection and song.

And here's our commercial!

Song Of Rejoicing

First off, an apology for the lack of updates over the past couple weeks.  Besides a busier than normal work schedule of late, I also recently traveled to Mobile, AL to attend my brother’s ordination to the priesthood.  What a joyous and beautiful celebration, but as you might imagine there wasn’t much time for blogging.  (On a side note, Fr. Stephen Vrazel maintains his own blog and if you’re curious I encourage you to give it a look – there’s always interesting spiritual food for thought to be found there.)

In any event though, Michael and I have not been completely idle during our online absence.  In fact, we’ve been very busy learning the ropes on a new digital recorder that will enable us to create demo recordings of some of our other songs to be shared here.

Today, we’re uploading our first of these demo recordings, Song Of Rejoicing.  This song may be familiar to IHM parishioners since we have used it a number of times over the past year and half.  It was written primarily for use on Gaudete Sunday in Advent and Laetare Sunday in Lent, and the IHM community has picked this song up quite well.  Click the Play button on the blue Streampad player bar across the bottom of your browser window to give it a listen and feel free to let us know what you think via email or the comments section.  If you’d like to read more about the inspiration behind this song, click the Read More link below.  Lyrics can also be found after the jump.  Thanks for stopping by.

What's next?

In the short time that this website has been operational, it seems clear that we have developed a small but very loyal readership.  As Michael and I continue to pursue various publishing options for our music, we'd like to take a moment to thank you, our readers, for your ongoing support of our efforts.


With our last song posting (Let Us Build The House Of The Lord), we have now exhausted all of the original material recorded during the IHM concert last March.  The choir sang several other songs that night that I really wish we could upload here.  I particularly liked our rendition of John Foley's How Lovely Is Your Dwelling.  But unfortunately, there are legal issues associated with posting said recordings so you'll just have to take my word for it that the choir sounded awesome (and come to the next concert that we put on!)


As far as our original music goes though, Michael and I are continuing to write together, and we have numerous additional pieces, both old and new, that we intend to share via this website.  We are in the process of recording demos of some of these songs now, and the first fruits of those labors should be available for posting within the next week or so.  We are also looking into the possibility of a more professionally produced recording effort, and we will keep you posted on any developments on that front as well.  In the meantime, please keep us in your prayers, and please share this music and website with anyone you think might appreciate it.  God bless.